'Why do innocent people have to die? When is it going to stop?'

Anxiety was high on the streets of Southall yesterday, with many residents of the west London neighbourhood worried about family and friends in Mumbai. Many had spent hours trying to contact loved ones the previous night.

Arif Charna, 32, who has lived in the UK for the past three years, explained that his mother lives about 20 metres from the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. "As soon as I heard the news I started trying to call, but the phone wasn't connecting. I felt helpless, I am so far away. Finally I got through and they are fine, but they are not leaving the house."

Charna has cousins, aunts and uncles in the terrorism-hit city. He said he had managed to contact a friend who said there was an atmosphere of fear in Mumbai. "He sounded very worried, but had been to the hospital to donate blood. He said many people were volunteering."

Among the bright sari material in Maharaja Textiles, Gurdev Ruprah said she had called her sister and niece in Mumbai immediately after the attacks. "I was very shocked, it just looked like a film. We rang very quickly and they are fine, but it makes me very sad. Why do innocent people have to die? When is it going to stop?"

Izmat Husain, 49, vice-chairman of the north-west England Conservative party, was visiting Southall on business yesterday. He had received a text message from Conservative MEP Sajjad Karim, who was barricaded in a restaurant in the basement of the Taj Mahal hotel. "We know he is OK, but we haven't heard anything else from him.

"I have spoken to contacts in the city and they are safe, but they are worried from a business point of view. There are already a lot of problems in the world financially, and when you face this sort of thing, obviously it is going to be bad for business."

Some people fear the effect on religious divisions. In the incense-filled Sira cash and carry, Daljit Bharma, 30, said: "When you think of bombs, you think of Muslims. It's sad, but it's just like that. Lots of our customers are Muslims and here in Southall everyone gets on, but in India it's going to be really bad."

In the Glassy Junction, which claims to be the first pub in the UK to accept rupees, Ali Imran, an 18-year-old Muslim student, said: "I'm proud of being a Muslim, and what I've been taught is the total opposite of what these people are doing. But we are going to get the blame for these terrorists."